|
The phenomenon of
Chagall’s creativity permanently provokes interest both in Russia
and abroad. His canvases, belonging to the Gallery, travel a lot
to be exhibited in the countries of Europe and America. And today
in its own halls the Tretyakov Gallery exhibits little known
Chagall’s drawings, watercolors and gouaches of the period from
early Vitebsk sketches to latest Paris collages, and also his
etchings – the famous illustrations to the Holy Bible and to La
Fontaine’s fables. There are over 150 works presented at the
exhibition. Among them - paintings, drawings, sculptures, pieces
of applied arts from Russian and foreign museums, as well as from
private collections.
Mark Chagall didn’t
get professional art education. His main teacher was his natural
surrounding – life of Jewish, Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian and
French people. Realistic or fantastic events, reflected by the
painter in his works, are always connected with true life and real
locations by so called special “Chagall’s passwords”: everyday
objects or recognizable signs of the places. You can find those
“passwords” everywhere: in his naïve signboards for a barber in
Vitebsk and for a milkman in Paris, on the cross of the orthodox
church and in chimeras of the Notre Dam, in simple embroidery and
on menorahs and Torah, in street musicians and on revolutionary
banners.The painter said: “It is not true, that my art is
fantastic. I’m realist and I love normal life on the Earth!”
|
 |
|
Hymn of the
Clock Quay . 1968 |
The main part of
the exposition is Chagall’s family collection: a series of unique
portraits of the members of his family. They were never exhibited
in Russia before. This series - “My life” (1922) - is a kind of an
illustrative autobiography of the artist. And a natural
background, but also an important personage of all his pictures,
is his deeply-loved home town Vitebsk.
For the first time
Moscow public will see albums of young Chagall from the French
archive of Blez Sandrar - a writer and a poet, but also a friend
of Mark Chagall. It was Blez Sandrar, who brought Chagall into the
avant-garde circle of artists in Paris. The exhibition also
demonstrates the illustrations to Nikolay Gogol’s novel “Dead
souls”.
As a part of the
program “A Year of French Culture in Russia”, the exhibition
emphasizes an international character of Chagall’s works as one
the main features of his painting.
|
